


In the Common Tongue

by ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Affection, Character Study, Engagement, Established Relationship, Lizard Kissin' Tuesday, Love Languages, Multi, Penumbra Pride Week, Penumbra Pride Week Day 3, Penumbra Pride Week Day 4, Penumbra Pride Week Day 7, Proposals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-14 13:12:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19274020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand/pseuds/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand
Summary: There are many different ways of showing love.





	1. The World Goes Still, So Still Inside (Damien: Words)

**Author's Note:**

> I've had the idea that each member of Rad Bouquet represents a different love language for a while now. Each chapter focuses on one of the trio, with two sections in the chapter from the perspectives of the other two and how they experience the title character's love language. 
> 
> Title of the chapter is from Josh Groban's "When You Say You Love Me"  
> Title of the work from Hozier's "Moment's Silence (Common Tongue)"

Rilla  
It’s the first reason she falls in love with him. His skill with words is unlike anything she’s ever known before. The first time he tells her a story, narrating the battle that’s landed him in her hut with wounds needing tending to, she gets so lost in his voice that she stops bandaging him up and just… Sits there. Listening, enraptured by the sound of his voice, the lilting way he speaks like he’s reciting poetry, the way his tone and volume swell and ebb with each and every word. His words are magic, filling her world with colorful images that dance through the air around him in time with the symphony that falls from his lips. 

It is something else entirely when that magic gets directed at her. When he confesses his affection for her, not long after they meet, he rambles on for so long that she’s not sure how he hasn’t passed out from a lack of oxygen. When he finally pauses long enough for her to get a word in edgewise, she finds all her words have caught in her throat. For how could she possibly respond to that? How could her logical, precise, and clinical speech ever be enough for this man? 

She finds her own words, though, eventually. His words might be magic, but hers are medicine. Talking him down from panic attacks, helping him navigate his way through his thought spirals. Her words are a balm to soften the sharp edges of his anxiety; she can soothe his mind’s fears with the words he needs to hear. They aren’t flowery or beautiful or profound, not like his. But they are enough, and he has more than enough words for the both of them. 

Arum  
He tells Arum upon their first meeting. The little knight is a poet by trade. Arum gripes and moans about this, Sir Damien’s poetry so… pointless, useless nothings that don’t hold up under an ounce of scrutiny. How can anyone possibly spew such nonsense and mean it? Ridiculous little knight prattling on, wasting precious air. Wasting his breath, his time, Arum’s patience. 

For all his complaints, for all his scoffing, the wind still gets knocked out of him the first time he stumbles upon the book of poetry Damien is always scribbling away in. Damien will shower Rilla with compliments all day long, composing sonnets and odes to her hair, her work, her smile. He never does this with Arum, and Arum is grateful for this. He thinks he would die of mortification if the little knight spoke to him like that. How Rilla can stand to be… serenaded all day is beyond his comprehension. 

Arum had assumed that their relationship was too new, still too uncertain and unbalanced for Damien to feel so strongly for him as he does for Rilla. A mere fascination and attraction, their relationship established merely as a method of sating some vague curiosity that occupied the poet’s mind. The depth of emotion Damien’s words for Rilla convey is not something he has yet earned. But as he flips through the book of poetry, he suddenly understands. Page after page, line after line, word after word, everything that Damien has never said. 

(Damien knew - or thought anyway - that his musings would not be well-received, so instead of letting them go to their intended recipient, he trapped them within the pages of a book, where they could leave his mind but not be a bother to his friend-lizard.)

Arum reads each page, each word dedicated to his eyes, his knives, his cape, his mind, his violet eyes. And he falls in love. He falls in love with words he realizes he might never hear aloud. He falls in love with the knight whose poetry bleeds the love he has so carefully hidden away. He falls in love because, for the first time, he feels loved in return.


	2. Your Hand in My Hand, So Still and Discreet (Arum: Touch)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arum might be uncomfortable with words, but he he certainly isn't uncomfortable with touch. 
> 
> Title of the chapter is from Hozier's "In a Week" (yep, it's another Hozier lyric folx don't mind me)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this one REALLY fast so I'm sorry if it's a little messy but uhhh yeah at least I finished it lol. this is going up like 2 hours late because I'm a DISASTER but I'm putting it up as Day 4 anyway because POLYAMORY BABYYYYYY

Damien  
It starts first with their second duel, with their bodies pressed together over a screaming flower. Damien tells himself that it’s the thrill of the battle, the thrill of… being hunted by this monster that causes his heart to race. He can lie to himself and say that it isn’t the weight of the giant lizard laid over his torso, that it’s sharp claws that are threatening to puncture the skin of his shoulders or the sharp teeth bared so close to his throat. 

But, when they have separated and the lizard has drawn his lethal claws across Damien’s forearm, and tears his precious cape to make a bandage, Damien’s heart thrills just the same. How can such deadly weapons can be so… delicate? So careful not to do any more damage to his already bleeding arm. Damien, for the first time since meeting this monster who has flung his world into chaos, is absolutely certain he is in no danger. 

Later, when the battle has been won and they have returned to the swamp, finally having earned a blessedly quiet moment to themselves, Damien knows it is his turn to leave. His beloved flower has moved on without him, and who is he to blame her? Even his own heart was stirred by the violet eyes and the touch of those claws. But Arum challenges him to their final duel, and when he disarms himself so that Damien will speak honestly, Damien could really argue that Arum is not in fact, disarmed. He knows first-hand just how lethal those claws can be, and he can only imagine the teeth are that much worse, but he’ll speak honestly anyway. He trusts this lizard and his gentle touch, and it is this trust that pushes him to step forward and to truly initiate physical affection for the first time with Arum. 

Damien kisses him, and Arum purrs. Actually purrs. And as Arum holds him close he finds that he hopes the lizard never lets him go. 

Rilla  
The first time he touches her, besides passing brushes here and there, he literally sweeps her off her feet. At the time, it makes her uncomfortable, but by the time she’s been thrown out of his Keep and he has vanished through the portal she longs for him to wrap his many arms around her again and never let go. 

When they begin their life together, it’s one of the first things she notices. He doesn’t often speak words of affection, and becomes clearly uncomfortable whenever she or Damien talk about their love for him. She teases him about it mostly because she likes watching him squirm and ruffle his frill, but also because she knows he just isn’t used to affection shown so openly. Within the first few days of them living together and trying… well, them, she notices how close he always is to at least one of them.

When Damien is busy running through training drills, he sits next to Rilla at her work desk, pressed so close their shoulders touch, one of his hands resting on the small of her back, his tail curling around her waist. When she’s busy with her experiments, he will go to where Damien is sitting, scribbling in his book of poetry, and curl into him, resting his head on Damien’s shoulder, nuzzling into his neck. His four arms will wrap around Damien’s torso, and the little poet will lean back until his head rests on Arum’s chest. 

Rilla sees just how much he seeks out physical contact with his loves, and she decides to test a theory she’s been rolling around in her mind for a bit. The noise he makes the first time she walks up behind him while he’s working and wraps her arms around him, leaning into his back and pressing her cheek against his cool scales confirms the theory. It’s partly a noise of surprise, but it’s also that same purr that rumbled out of him the first time Damien kissed him.

Arum will seek out their physical contact at every opportunity, but he never expects that to be reciprocated. To have his two loves seek him out for affection is something that he can barely fathom, so when it happens it is all he can do to keep himself from just melting in their arms. Rilla makes a mental note and files it away in her collection of “Things She Knows About the Lizard”, and decides she’s going to do as much as she can to make sure Arum makes that happy, safe sound all the time. It is a VERY adorable noise, after all.


	3. If I'd Ask You, Do You Think You Want To? (Rilla: Action)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rilla is a scientist. When she has a thought, she has to do something about it. It is this scientific curiosity and her innate need to do things in order to solve her problems or find the answers to questions that pop into her mind that prompt her to say, “You wanted to marry me, once. Is that still true?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOH the final chapter. I really liked doing character studies for these three, but I'm also REALLY glad I managed to finish this. I refuse to abandon fics I REFUSE (watch me abandon a bunch like 5 minutes after saying that)
> 
> Title is from Against the Current's "Closer, Faster"

Arum  
At the commotion in the crowd, his head snaps up. It takes a moment for the crowd to settle enough for him to see, but when he sees her he freezes in horror and shock. How could she have found this place? Why is she here? He let her go. He let her go back to her family. The people she TRULY cared about. 

And yet. She’s here. For. Him? Is it possible that she came back here for him? Because of him? But no. She’s just here to protect her people, her family. To get the answers he wouldn’t give her. She’s not here because she… Ridiculous. 

But he’ll give her what she wants. He’ll give her what she came here for, he owes her that much. She didn’t come here for him, to help him, but she still managed to give him one last chance to set things right. And so he does, the only way he can. 

Then he’s taken away and he doesn’t hear. Hear how, even though it is meant to be a bluff, there is more than just a hint of truth in Rilla’s words when she stands in front of a room of monsters and declares that she is in love with a lizard. That she couldn’t just go back to her old life without DOING something about this fact. And that’s why she’s come here. That’s why she does her best to rationalize to Damien. To Arum. That she’s thought about this, that she thinks they can make this work. But they have to try. 

Damien  
The first time around, he asks her and she says yes, and they are both happier than they’ve ever been in their lives. But soon she starts deflecting, and he grows more and more anxious. Later, he will be so grateful for this, when he lies tangled in a bed of flowers with his two loves. Had he married Rilla this likely never would have been possible. 

Now, he is content, writing on spare scraps of paper while Rilla works on one of her more recent experiments. Arum has returned to his Keep for the day, to check in and get some supplies for Rilla. He smiles when Rilla comes to sit next to him, wrapping her arms around him and leaning her head on his shoulder. 

Rilla is a scientist. When she has a thought, she has to do something about it. It is this scientific curiosity and her innate need to do things in order to solve her problems or find the answers to questions that pop into her mind that prompt her to say, “You wanted to marry me, once. Is that still true?”

He immediately babbles out his response, “My Rilla, my love, of course! But, of course things have changed now and -”

“I know, I know.” She cuts him off before he can over-rationalize too quickly. “But… what if we did? Get married. All three of us, I mean.”

Damien turns in his seat to look at her more fully, “Rilla… are you-”

“Yes, Damien. I am proposing to you. I love you, and I love Arum, and what we have right now is great, and it’s comfortable, but I want to marry you. Both of you. And I know Arum isn’t here right now, and I’ll have to ask him later, and who knows what he would even think about this, but I wanted to ask you first. So, Sir Damien of the Second Citadel, will you… marry me?”

Damiens face is pure bliss as he leans in to kiss her. “Yes. Yes, my Rilla, yes a thousand times over.”

It’s not a foolproof plan. There’ll be plenty of details and technicalities to work through, but Rilla can handle that. She can handle problems as long as she gets the chance to solve them. What matters is that she loves a man, and she loves a lizard. And she wants to marry them. And so she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're curious about what those technicalities and details might entail - @aetheraria has a fic where they explore JUST what marriage might mean for these three and it is SO GOOD!!!! So go read it. Do it. Go. It's called The Rite of Movement and it's here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18242981/chapters/43164524
> 
> I'm a disaster and idk how to put hyperlinks but yeah just copy paste.


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